xoxo Happy Valentines Day! xoxo

A day blinded by red and pink, flowers, chocolate and sappy cards…and I love every second of it--for the most part because I get to spend it with people that I care about more than anything in the world. I am so lucky to have such a loving and caring family--I am.

Tonight, Andy and I have a great night planned: Indian food by candle light and one of the girliest movies ever: Confessions of a Shopaholic! So. Excited. Our babysitter fell through without enough time to find another, so Jade will get to enjoy the evening with us.

Here is a picture of our little bitty, decked out in her V-day gear:



This is the goofball pose I got when I told her to smile--her personality shines right through!!

R.I.P. Hammy the Hamster

Jadyn's first pet passed away last night and our little girl is soooo sad. He was such a cute and fun little critter and he LOVED to roll around on the tile in his Hamster ball. Jadyn really loved him, too. He was so friendly--if you would go into Jadyn's room he would come out to see what was going on and if you put your finger up to his cage, he would come straight to you and start sniffing through the glass.
Andy and Jadyn put him in a discarded checks box and buried him in the backyard last night, in the dark. I guess we'll be making a trip to Petsmart on Sunday!

Hammy the Hamster (the most cleverly named rodent)
October 6, 2008 - February 12, 2009

(Yes, this is a recycled picture, but I can't get my iphone to send mail when I'm at work. Drats!)

Black History Challenge - 2009

Our sweet little girl entered a challenge sponsored by the OKC Thunder in honor of Black History Month: African American Heroes. The rules were simple: submit a piece of art work, a poem, a one-page essay or a video about her African American hero and why he/she was chosen. Jade has been crazy for Obama and, naturally, decided to focus on him, submitting a short clip for the contest. Participants in this contest were grades 1 - 12, which means an eight year old has very little chances of winning, but she had a lot of fun filming the video and she got some great consolation prizes:

• Four Tickets to a Thunder game


• Two Tickets to the Renaissance Exhibit at the Art Museum


• Six Tickets to the Oklahoma History Center

Below is her entry:

~Wobble Bobble~

For Valentines Day 2007, I got Andy a bobble head of his favoritest person ever: Moi! I found a website that specializes in personalized bobble heads and it was a must have. All they needed was a picture of me (not to mention a substantial chunk of my paycheck) and *voila*, 4-6 weeks later a mini-me arrived via UPS! My darling husband keeps his uber fantastic gift on a shelf in his office so he can spend all day with me--what more could a wife ask for?

The only problem with getting him such an awesome present is that I haven't been able to top it…!

Here is a picture of my wobble bobble:


(please note that the picture was provided by Andy's mobile phone, hence the quality doesn't do it justice!)

Jessica Simpson: Mom Jeans

Although I am not a fan of Jessica Simpson, I have been feeling sympathetic towards her since she made that ridiculous decision to split with Nick Lachey. She has not only gone from one relationship to the next, being burned each time, but her weight is constantly fluctuating and the media scrutinizes every aspect of her life. Now, I firmly believe that if you crave stardom and your dreams are realized then there are consequences. The millions upon millions of dollars that a celebrity receives comes at the price of their privacy...and that's just the way of the business.

Jessica's weight has been in the news for a couple of weeks. She is being called fat by the media and her 'mom jeans' seem to be a topic of conversation on and off the web. In a recent issue of Us Weekly Magazine, there is a story devoted to her weight and a blip on the front cover to help sell their magazines. The story on the inside has her estimated weight in this so-called 'fat' picture at a whopping 135 pounds. Wow...whatever will she do with all of that weight...(sarcasm).

I bet more than half of the women in the United States - 5'0" and up - are dying to be 135 pounds (sometimes literally, right?). Just because Jessica Simpson isn't a size zero and isn't part of the anorexic Hollywood scene, does not mean she is fat. It leaves me to wonder how many women out there read this magazine article and felt bad about themselves because they weigh more than this so-called 'fat' celebrity.

If you look at the picture above, you will see that not only are her jeans really high ("mom jeans")but her double belt is really tight around her waist, causing a slight bulge that even super skinny people get (Selma Blair on Kath & Kim in last night's episode). In addition, Jessica's breasts are huge and they are sagging just a bit, which make her look even more 'fat'.

Simpson is the cover story of last week's Us Weekly. I do look forward to reading this article, as it discusses weight battles and infidelity rumors! (Hey, what goes around comes around, right??)

So...this will probably be the only time in my life that I go on the defense for Ms. Simpson. I'm glad you were here to witness it!

Weigh-In: Week Cuatro

So we have reached week four of the P|M Challenge and with it, I bring rather discouraging (to me) news...I have gained 2.2 pounds since last Monday. Funny how loads of work and effort + eating right will only make a person lose one pound, but four days of not eating super well (although not THAT bad) and lacking three days of exercise will make a person gain 2.2 pounds...

So...the contest ends on Friday (in four days) and I've pretty much thrown in the towel as of this morning. So that's pretty sad. I'm sad. If I wasn't up against someone who is currently breast feeding and able to drop two pounds in ten minutes, I might not feel this way, but the fact of the matter is, it is impossible to win now.

I've now lost a total of 4.2 pounds...pretty much back to week one. Oh well...maybe next year!

The R's Have It!

One of the blogs that I frequent (thank you, Reese!), Clever Girl Goes Blog, had a post of an interesting little game earlier this week called the 'ABC Game'. Clever Girl was assigned a letter from one of her blogger pals and she made a list of 10 of her favorite things that begin with that letter! This game looked like something I would thoroughly enjoy, so I had my sister choose a random letter from A-Z and I was officially assigned the letter "R".

So here goes it:

1. Ryan Phillippe: I would like to officially dub Ryan Phillippe the 'Most Beautiful White Man in the World.' He may not be the best actor out there and he may have been outshined by his amazingly talented ex-wife, but his looks alone draw me to movies and magazine articles surrounding him. (I do admit that I hated Stop Loss, though--but I did watch it!)

2. Reese's Pieces: We can't have a Ryan without a Reese, even if it is one of peanut buttery goodness! This is my favorite movie snack EVER and I get disappointed when a theater doesn't offer it. E.T. totally knew what he was doing when he followed that trail of Reese's Pieces--you could trap me in a box the same way!

3. Reading: I love the escape that reading provides, whether it is to a small village in Africa (The Poisonwood Bible) or a trendy apartment in London (Confessions of a Shopoholic). Reading is also the only way I travel abroad--at least until I can afford that boat ticket to the United Kingdom!!!

4. Rasmalai: This rich, Indian dessert has been my favorite dessert (of all time) since I first tried it at the age of 12. Rasmalai is a sugary, milky dessert made of cheese, soaked in cream and it is *delish*!

5. Romy and Michelle's Highschool Reunion: This movie came out when I was in highschool and it was my favorite movie! My friend Julie and I would watch it all the time and in our relationship, I was Romy and she was Michelle. Julie was a fantastic artist and she drew a picture of "us" (Romy and Michelle) that I had up on my wall until I moved out of my parents house. Good Times!

6. Roaring Twenties: In my mind, I associate the 1920's with a peaceful, fun time in America and I always get a feeling of nostalgia anytime I see a picture from that era or try to imagine what life was like back then. I love the whole flapper scene, the mobsters, the silent films…I just feel like I would have enjoyed this decade.

7. Ricardo's: Lucy and Ricky Ricardo--America's original sweethearts. I love Lucy, the quirky red-head who fills the room with laughter when she graces the television screen. Ricky, her Cuban husband, would get frustrated with Lucy's schemes, but his love for her shined through in the end…and always. Even in real life, he admitted that he never stopped loving Lucy, despite his infidelities and his love for alcohol.

8. Riddles: I love to challenge my brain with riddles and it is such a great feeling to come up with the answer, whether it takes hours, days…or even months! Okay, I have never gone months, I couldn't handle not knowing the answer for that long so I would probably resort to researching the answer (even if it is technically cheating!).

9. Redbull and Vodka: My new favorite shot! Sure, it keeps me up all night and screws up my sleeping schedule for a couple of days, but it gets to the point fast (the tipsy point!) and it tastes oh so yummy (it doesn't burn my throat like some shots do!) So, let's raise our glasses to Redbull and Vodka!

10. Riley: My first nephew gets special props up here and will always hold a place in my heart! He is the brightest, silliest and most handsome little boy there is and I just love him so much!!! So I have essentially saved the best 'R' for last!!!



If you are up to the challenge of your own 'ABC Game', let me know and I will happily assign you a letter to get your list started!!!

Books, Books, Books!

You may have gathered that I. Love. To. Read...so a fun little activity I may find on another blog (Clever Girl Goes Blog) that deals with books is definitely going to wind up here! I had fun going through this list of book titles!!!

What you do is take the following list of books (the top 106 marked most often as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users). Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you started but couldn't finish, strike through the ones you really sort of hated, put an *asterisk* next to the ones you've read more than once, and underline the ones on your own personal To Be Read list.


Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi
The name of the rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury tales
The Historian : a novel
A portrait of the artist as a young man
Love in the time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A clockwork orange
Anansi boys
The once and future king
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & demons
The inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s travels
Les misérables
The corrections
The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune
The prince
The sound and the fury
Angela’s Ashes
The god of small things
A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A short history of nearly everything
Dubliners
The unbearable lightness of being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
**The Catcher in the Rye**
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

There are a few random books on this list that most people haven't made it all the way through, such as The Iliad, The Odyssey and The Aeneid--but having majored in English in college, there were many Greek Mythology classes to take and I took them! Who knew that the only benefit I would gain from it would be bolding their names on a super awesome list! Yay me!

I dare you to post a list of your own!

xoxo

Weigh-In: Week Tres

Weighed in this morning 1.4 pounds lighter than last Monday. I have also crossed that threshhold into the next set of ten numbers...which is very exciting, indeed!

So that's 6.4 pounds total.

Wow...these pounds are shedding off VERY. SLOWLY.
Expected, I know...but after the first week of losing 4 pounds, it's a little disappointing, I must admit!

As the little engine said: I think I can I think I can I think I can...

Twelve days left!

Walk and Roll!!!

Where oh where did the weekend go? It slipped right through our fingers--ah, but don't they all?
We had a pretty eventful weekend! Friday night, we kicked up our heels and caught up on our television viewing! Saturday was a day of work for Andy and a day of relaxation for Jaimie (not to mention the only free day of the week in my diet, which means no exercise and eat anything I want--in moderation)--fun times! Saturday evening we went to an adult game night at a friend's house--a friend I have not seen since, oh...8th grade! It was very much fun! We played Loaded Questions and Scattergories and the food was fantastic! It was so much fun catching up with Carly and her sister...and to meet both of their guys!! Good Times!
Poor Andy was so sick on Sunday that he spent the entire day in bed, with the exception of a field trip to my parents house to watch the Super Bowl! For me, Sunday had me jumping back on that wagon. I ate super healthy--bringing a weight watchers meal to my parents house to eat instead of the yummy snacks and chili they had set up for the game--and I did a lot of walking. I walked from my house to my parents house twice (4 miles total). My dad drove me home the first time and then I drove home from the Super Bowl the second time. (This is where the walk and roll title comes from! Clever Clever!) I also went that extra mile and did 31 minutes on the elliptical and 10 minutes on the treadmill. Hey...the super bowl was on, my movie had ended and I was bored!

Below is a picture of my second walk of the day (yes...i stopped and took a picture of my shadow with my iphone!):

Book Club: The Shack

After a couple months of hiatus, our book club met today at lunch to discuss The Shack by William P. Young. This book is a national bestseller, being plucked from bookstore shelves all over the country. I can see how people would find this book inspirational--people who aren't avid readers, people who do not attend church often (or at all), and people who want to believe that there is something magical out there that a lay man can experience at any given moment. Although I did not hate this book, it was not one of my favorites. There were a few bits of the book that I did like, such as the fact that it emphasizes one's individual relationship with God and wrapping your mind around the relationship God has with Himself (a point that I did not see until our discussion today). There was much more about the book that I didn't like such as the fact that God was represented as an African American woman, surrounded by a magical fairy land who answered to the name of 'Papa'. I did not like how God insisted the main character forgive his daughter's killer so that God would be able to redeem this man or how there was not a reason as to WHY God could not stop this man from murdering the young girl, although he watched the entire situation play out. That is the human in me, though--the part of me that has flaws and errors--the part that could not forgive as God does every day, every minute...every second. So, there were good qualities and bad qualities of this book. Another point brought out in book club was that there are times/situations in a person's life where certain books are best read. I suggest reading this book when you are losing faith or just need a quick 'upper'. It isn't a long book and can be read in the span of a weekend.

Below is a picture of the *delicious* dessert that Jennifer made for the group. They are brownies made out of Samoas (aka the bestEST Girl Scout Cookies Ever!!!)

Hmmm...the dessert picture is bigger than the book picture. That makes sense--I liked it WAY more!

Book Review: The Glass Castle

During my two 'snow days' off of work, I was able to fit in quite a bit of reading and I finished a fantastic book, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. This is a memoir about a family of six that live on the brink of homelessness while the children are growing up. The main character, Jeannette, describes the conditions in which they lived, how they managed to feed themselves, the relationships within their family and the constant teasing that went on during school hours. In the end, Jeannette grows up, moves to New York City, graduates from an Ivy League university and writes magazines, books and is a correspondent for msnbc.com. Her father was an alcoholic and her mother was an artist; however, both were extremely intelligent people. There really was no excuse for Jeannette and her siblings to grow up the way that they did...the father did battle alcoholism and never made a true effort to overcome his disease, but the mother was an able bodied person, capable of helping out. Jeannette paints her mother as lazy and selfish in the book--the final kick being in the end when she finds out how much the land her mother had been holding onto throughout most of their childhood is worth. I got really emotionally involved with this book and I truly enjoyed it.

Weigh In: Week Dos

So, this week I've lost exactly one pound (to the decimal point again). Although this is not the result I wanted, I am glad to see I've lost and not gained...I was VERY bad this weekend!!! So, I've lost a total of 5 pounds thus far...and will need to step up my game a bit if I'm going to win this thing!!!

Book Review: Nineteen Minutes

April 20, 2009 marks the ten-year anniversary of the Columbine Massacre, a tragedy that I can recall vividly although I was only eighteen years old when it occured. Jodi Picoult's book, Nineteen Minutes, brought images to my mind of that day. This book - phenomenally written - is about a massacre at a highschool and instead of the 17 year old murderer committing suicide, as the Columbine assailants did, he survives and goes to trial. The book skips back and forth from the incident to the 17 years prior to show the reader what actions and events led up to that point--what caused the killer to lose it and murder ten of his classmates. It shows you points of view from the murderer, his parents, a 'popular' student and even the life of the attorney defending him. This book also makes the reader sympathetic to the defendant--it shows that he, too, was a victim but that in NO WAY excuses his ultimate actions. Nineteen Minutes, which is so titled because that is how long the massacre lasted from start to finish, is certain to touch the heart of any parent.

Goodbye Dear Friend...*tear*

Due to the overwhelming responses I've gotten via email and a few comments, I am going to divulge my 4LB/1week weight loss secrets. First, I must give credit where credit is due: Kaitlyn. She is majoring in a field that is health related and the first day of my new diet, she sent me loads of helpful tips, which I am trying to abide by, so THANK YOU, KATE!!
Next, I must say good bye to my dear friend, Coca-Cola:

Dear Coca-Cola,
Love of my life, I miss you so much. It's been a week and three days and I live and breathe through your carbonated fumes, but alas, not a drop has touched my tongue. You will always have a place in my heart, but I can no longer allow you to reside on my hips. It was a great ride, and I may allow you to visit from time to time, but in the distant future.
Love Always,
Your Number One Fan

Now that I got the bad stuff out of the way...

• The major thing that I have taken from Kaitlyn's advice is the water. I have been drinking a gallon of water a day. I started off with a few bottles, but I have finally reached that point of a gallon...and since I have given up ALL soda-even diet!-, water is the only thing that I am drinking.
• I am also using half of my lunch period to walk and I take the stairs anywhere I go. Since I work on the 14th floor of our building, I will get off at 11 (another floor that our firm is on) and I walk the rest of the way up--in the morning, after lunch...whenever.
• Kaitlyn also suggested that I cut my calories in half, so I went ahead and started Weight Watchers (sans the meetings). Everything I learned from weight wathers has been from my sister and my mom. I am keeping within my point range every day and I have been very lucky that Andy is so supportive and isn't tempting me with his food. He will even eat it in the car before he gets home so I don't have to smell it or take 'just one fry'. Also, I am allowing myself one 'out-to-eat' meal per week.
• Finally, we can't have the diet without the exercise (yuck!). In addition to the walking and the stairs, I have been doing the Wii fit for 30 minutes to an hour every day. This may seem lame to some of you, but a few of the games on there really get my heart pumping like that damn hula hoop, rhythm boxing and Advanced Step. I have also been on the Elliptical for 30 minutes, 5 days a week and the treadmill is my cool down of 5 - 10 minutes. [I cannot get into running again until the weather gets a bit warmer! It totally dried my skin out in November!!]

So, those are my little weight loss secrets for now. I can hardly wait to see what weigh-in is on Monday! Hopefully I am not disappointed!